Even the profane historians speak of him. Justin, xxxvi. 2.
[Page 70].—Casium.] Ἔστι τὸ Κάσιον θινωδης τις λοφος ἀκρωτηριάξων, ἄνυδρος, ὅπου τοῦ Πομπηι΅ου τοῦ Μάγνου σῶμα κεῖται, καὶ Δίος ἔστιν ἱερον Κασίου. Strabo, xvi. p. 760. There was another Mons Casius, which must not be confounded with this, near Seleucia in Syria, and to the latter belong the medals inscribed Ζεύς Κάσιος. The ancients fabled that Typhon had been buried under the Casian mount, or in the lake Sirbonis, which is near it. (Herod. ii. 6.) According to Herodotus, this mountain was the eastern boundary of Egypt.
[Page 72].—A stranger of the gate.] The Jewish writers (not however those of the New Testament) speak of two kinds of proselytes, the גדי צדק Proselytes of Righteousness, and גרי שער Proselytes of the Gate. The former were those who submitted to circumcision, and in every respect conformed to the Mosaic law. (Exod. xii. 48.) The proselyte of the gate, so called from the expression “the stranger who is within thy gates,” frequent in the Mosaic law, was one who lived among the Jews; generally it should seem in a servile or menial capacity, only so far conforming to the law, as not to offend against any of its sacred and fundamental principles—not sacrificing to any false God, perhaps not working on the sabbath-day. Jennings’s Jew. Ant. i. 144. Others suppose that the proselytes of the gate were bound to observe the seven precepts imposed on the descendents of Noah. See Calmet’s Dict. Art. Noachidæ, and the commentators on Acts xv. 20. In the earlier times of Jewish history, none would embrace their religion but those who were domiciliated among them; but when they became dispersed over the world, and their doctrines more generally known, many appear to have attached themselves to the worship of the one God, without further conformity to the Mosaic institutions. Many learned men, however, suppose that only one kind of proselytes was known among the Jews, namely, those who had received circumcision. See Lardner, Works, vi. 523.
[Page 72].—Goshen.] Respecting its situation see Jablonski, Diss. de Terra Gosen; Opusc. ii. 77. seq. According to him it was the Heracleotic name, an island in the Nile, above Memphis, and answering to the modern Fayoum. His reasons, however, seem insufficient to counterbalance the strong presumption (arising from the absence of all mention in the Exodus of crossing any branch of the river) that the abode of the Israelites must have been in Lower Egypt and beyond the Nile. Such is the general opinion of commentators.
[Page 73].—The martyr Stephen (Acts vii. 6.) appears to speak of the captivity of Israel in Egypt as lasting four hundred years. So Jos. Ant. i. 10. 3. ii. 9. 1. In Exod. xii. 40. their sojourning is said to have been four hundred and thirty years; Gen. xv. 13. it is foretold by God to Abraham, that his seed should be afflicted in a foreign land four hundred years, to which it is soon after subjoined, (ver. 16) “and in the fourth generation they shall come hither again.” It is, however, generally supposed, that the sojourning of Abraham and his descendents in Canaan, where they were strangers, is included in the four hundred, or four hundred and thirty years. Accordingly Usher reckons the first period at two hundred and fifteen years, and the Egyptian bondage at about the same number. The difficulty remains that only four generations, inclusive, elapsed from the going down into Egypt to the Exodus; for Moses and Aaron were sons of Amram, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi; this the author solves, by reference to the prolonged term of human life in those ages.
[Page 74].—Egyptian horror of pastoral tribes.] Gen. xlvi. 34. Ἀιγυπτίοις ἀπειρημένον ἤν περὶ νομὰς αναστρέφεσθαι. Jos. Ant. ii. 7. 5. It is generally supposed that this horror arose from the shepherds killing the sacred animals of the Egyptians; others regard it as a piece of policy on the part of the Egyptian priests to keep up a horror of the nomadic tribes, in order to confine the people to agriculture; others, as the effect of what the country had suffered from the irruptions of these tribes, especially that of the Hycsos or Shepherd kings. Jos. c. Apion. i. 15.
[Page 88].—Mosaic imitation of the Egyptian polity.] Whether any part of the Jewish laws and institutions were borrowed by Moses from the Egyptians, is a question of which the affirmative side has been maintained, with great learning, by Spencer, in his treatise De Legibus Hebræorum; and the negative by Witsius in his Ægyptiaca. Witsius, not denying many of the coincidences, alleges, that many things in which the Egyptians and the Jews agreed, may have been borrowed by the former from the latter. Considering that Egypt was a civilized, populous, and wealthy country, when Israel had not even become a people, this seems not probable. Some of those customs and rites which were observed by both nations, do not appear to have exclusively belonged to either, e. g. the remarkable custom of circumcision, the hereditary succession of the priesthood, the dress of the priests, the multiplicity of purifications, &c. Customs either exactly corresponding or nearly analogous to these, may be found in other nations; they had their origin from wants and feelings common to all, or had been handed down from primeval times. In regard to the coincidence between the civil laws of the Egyptians and the Jews, Michaelis well observes, “Without in the least degree derogating from his divine mission, I may be allowed to conjecture, that he may have adopted from other nations what he found among them deserving of imitation. If it be no presumption against his prophetic character, that he changed the traditionary usages of the nomadic Israelites into laws; neither is it any that he incorporated with his code the wisest civil regulations of the most civilized people.” Mos. Law, § 4. The grand peculiarity of the system of Moses, the unity, spirituality, and providence of God, he could have learnt neither from the wisdom of the Egyptians, nor that of any other nation; and on this argument may we safely rest the proof that he was really a prophet of the Most High. Compare Prichard’s Analysis of Egyptian Mythology, ch. iv.
[Page 90].—Only in the state of divine inspiration.] Plato quoted by Leland, Necess. of Rev. i. 258.
[Page 94].—Drifted sand.] “The lake Sirbonis is bordered on each side with hills of sand, which, borne into the water by the wind so thicken the same, as not by the eye to be distinguished from part of the continent, by means whereof whole armies have been devoured.” Sandys’ Travels, p. 107.
[Page 94].—Larish.] So Baumgarten writes the word commonly and more correctly spelt El-Arish, Churchill, i. 411.